Originally Posted by
Eric the Half a Bee
It started early on when Anderson (and in my opinion, rightly) got fed up of Price giving it large after some visits before retrieving his darts. It's certainly not the first time a darts player has had a go at his opponent for not retrieving his darts quickly enough. We all know that some players use the odd trick, like dropping a dart when retrieving them, knocking a flight off the dart and having to pick it up, not gripping onto one dart enough when pulling it out so they need another attempt to get it out. Such tactics are a bit underhand but have gone on for years and are difficult to prove.
However, with Price, he wasn't even subtle about it. He was blatant. He set out his stall straight away - "I'm going to disrupt your rhythm, wind you up and try and provoke a reaction". He's done it with other players. Russ Bray had words with him in the semi final for doing exactly that. Price got the reaction he wanted and had provoked.
Do you really think that, had Price got on with his game in the proper manner (as in no gamesmanship, no deliberately delaying retrieving his darts, not shouting in Anderson's direction etc etc) Anderson would have reacted?
I stand by what I've said. I believe Price is guilty of gamesmanship, the likes of I hope don't become appealing to other players. Every time I saw Price yelling after hitting a ton (sometimes even less than that if he'd hit a treble with the last dart), I thought "shut up you tool". Anderson is not the only player to have been wound up by Price. He's not going to be the last. If that's what Price needs to give him the edge, then the sport is all the poorer for it.